Thoughts 7

Injury Reduction Strategies – Do these actually work the way we think they work (e.g. reinforcing good movement patterns, strengthening joint stabilizers, lengthening ‘tight’ tissues) or do they work because they take away from the volume of weight room/sport practice? If athletes have 90 minutes to practice and you take 30 minutes to static stretch, the athletes will be fresher because they only practice for 60 minutes instead of 90. Less volume, less accumulated fatigue, less likelihood for injury.

“Bad” Mechanics – If we left movement mechanics alone (for the most part) and said that athletes self-organize and have individual ways of doing things (and nothing iswrongwith how someone moves)… then the ‘Movement Specialist’ might not be needed. Maybe we think people need to be fixed because problems create jobs. No problem, no work.

“We have no idea why a person gets injured. So to train to avoid abstract ideas is negative” – Adarian Barr. Academia tells us the cause for injuries and how to prevent them. The real world tells us academia made it all up.

In Antifragile, he says rationalizing and being rational are opposites. Being a team sports S&C coach, there’s a lot of guessing. I think I make rational choices when structuring a plan, but with so many moving parts (and my own personal bias), I think I rationalize my decisions. Idk. Check back in five years.

Quad to Hamstring strength ratio – start with the game. People always say how ‘weak’ athletes’ hamstrings are. But 1) How are they being tested? On a leg curl machine? I don’t think this mirrors hamstring action in sport. 2) Maybe an athlete’s quads are stronger than their hamstrings because their body has adapted to the sport and the style of play. Should we create an imaginary issue for them and make them balance it out? I don’t think this would be good. And 3) Frans Bosch says muscles specialize – some for force (e.g. THICK Glutes), some for speed (e.g. LONG Rectus Femoris, LONG Hamstrings). Does it make sense then to test hamstrings in a high-force, low-velocity manner? Seems very non-specific to how they will be used in sport.